The buzzards are an obivous symbol of death throughout the novel. The first introduction to them is pg. 15 when Jewel comments on Cora, Kate, and Eula waiting by Addie's bedside, "sitting there, like buzzards," as if they are waiting for her to die. That makes sense: buzzards flock to dead meat and Addie is as good as dead, so the reference to buzzards during this time fits. However, the buzzards keep reappearing throughout the rest of the novel. On pg. 94, Darl notes: "High above the house, against the quick thick sky, they hang in narrowing circles. For here they are no more than specks, implacable, patient, portentous." When Samson goes to check on the Bundren in the barn, he sees a buzzards: "It looked around and saw me and went on down the hall, sparddle-legged, with its wings kind of hunkered out, watching me first over one shoulder and the nover the other." Right before the Bundrens reach Jefferson, Darl sees them again: "High against [the sky] they han in narrowing circles, like the smoke, with an outward semblance of form and purpose but with no iference of motion, progress, or retrograde" (226).
So my question is, why? Why do these buzzards keep appearing when we already know that Addie is dead and has been dead for several days? Everyone knows that dead people start to smell after a couple of days, which would naturally attract buzzards. So what? This answer seems so obivous that I can't help but wonder if there is a deeper meaning. Any thoughts? - lma-c Feb 24, 2008 I agree that the buzzards have some deeper meaning. As lma said, the buzzards were an obvious sign of Addie's approaching death at the beginning of the novel, but after that it only seems logical that there would be buzzards following them as they traveled with the body. The buzzards become out of the ordinary because of their importance and the number of times they are mentioned. Vardaman who seems to be keeping track of how many there are notices them most. Vardaman also wonders where the buzzards go at night when they stop to sleep. He describes them as being "in little tall black circles" both on page 194 and 210.
They seem to be an important symbol for Vardaman. He is most intrigued by them. Maybe they represent a kind of spiritual death or a death of the relationships within the family as their journey proceeds. There most be an importance to the increasing number of buzzards that appear. Maybe they are foreshadowing what later happens with Darl because Darl is the one that Vardaman continually asks about the buzzards. Other than this the deeper meaning of the buzzards is still a mystery to me.- bga-c Feb 24, 2008
Yes, Vardaman was very intrigued by the buzzards. But I also thought the buzzards were a symbol of the ridiculousness and the ugliness of the Bundren's situation. Vardaman was curious about the birds, but to everyone else, they brought a sense of shame. When the buzzards were mentioned, I even felt embarrassed for the Bundren's. "There must have been dozen of them setting along the ridge-pole of the barn, and that boy was chasing another one around the lot like it was a turkey and it just lifting enough to dodge him and go flopping back to the roof of the shed again where he had found it setting on the coffin" (187). Nobody could catch the buzzards, they were always just out of reach. For Armstid, these buzzards seemed to be the last straw. It was described as an "outrage" both times the Bundren's stayed somewhere. The buzzards were an embarrassment. They were constantly hovering over the wagon so as to say "Oh, here come the Bundren's and their reeking, decaying mother." Vardaman was probably so interested in them because he was too young to understand the message they sent. - KGa-c Feb 24, 2008
I don't remember exactly where it is, but somewhere in the novel everybody else is doing their thing, but Vardaman is constantly watching the buzzards. It seems to me that it is just showing us how much Vardaman is trying to figure out death. He tries so hard to understand to concept death that it is consuming him. As he watches the buzzards, he is constantly reminded of his dead mother and the dead fish. While the others were bothered by the presence of the buzzards, Vardaman welcomed them because he was curious about them. Kind of like the coffin -- I think towards the end of the journey the others were getting annoyed by the stench and the presence of the coffin, but Vardaman was just trying to understand why his mom is still in there after such a long time. For me, the buzzards are just a symbol of death. - kkr-c Feb 24, 2008
This topic was brought up in class today and someone mentioned another possibility. The buzzards are following the Bundren family most obviously because of the smell of the rotting flesh of Addie's corpse. I believe it was Brother Tom who said that this is a family that is plagued by death. Is it another symbol that the buzzards are following the Bundrens because they, as a family, are dying? We don't have much evidence as to how much Addie held the Bundren family together, but it very well may be possible that this journey is the death of the family. We definitely see a symbolic death in many of the characters. They lose something of significant value, though it may not be their lives. Jewel loses his horse, Cash his leg, and Darl his mind. Could all these losses together aid the death of the family as a whole? - Kho-c Feb 25, 2008
Yea I agree with you Kho that the family as a whole in fact is dying I mean take a look at the book's ending. Darl goes insane and is taken away without anyone really caring, Addie's gone, Cash is hurt, and we can go on down the line, but the family is really being reduced to rumbles from their many years of dysfunction. At the end, Anse goes as far as immediately getting a new Mrs. Bundren, and I kind of view this as a rebirth or rekindling of the Bundren family, not to a better normal family, but just a repetition of the old dysfunctional family that existed before. As Faulkner said in his speech, humans will endure.- mka-c Feb 26, 2008
I don't think that there's that much here really. There's a parallel between the family and vultures, who prey off the dying, and so the family is also anticipating the death of Addie and after her death, using it, and feeding on it for their own purposes. We even talking in class on this: why do they all want to go to the city? Well, teeth, abortion, deliveries, etc. They're using their poor mother as an excuse, and don't even seem to mourn her properly. So that's how they're like them, but I'm not sure there's much else to it, just a parallel Faulkner stuck in, but nothing particularly meaningful, beyond the fact that none of them have completely sincere feelings and that their all just waiting for her to die and see what they can do once she's gone. Plus, vultures have a negative connotation, which sort of carries over to the family... - AZU-C Feb 26, 2008
I feel like the Bundren family and these Buzzards that keep following them around actually have a lot in common. See, both groups want to take advantage of Addie's death with the buzzards using it as a chance to possibly get a some meat while the Bundrens want to use Addie's death for their own various reasons none of which really involve actually paying respects to Addie, but rather treating her as a piece of meat for them to tear at. You have Anse who used the death as a chance to get the new teeth and a new wife upon Addie's burial in Jefferson, and of course you have Dewey Dell who wanted to get to Jefferson so that she could terminate her pregnancy. The point is that these people just like buzzards want to rip and tear at Addie after her death instead of doing the proper thing and properly paying their respects. Yes, on the surface it appears as though they are fulfilling her last wish by taking her body to Jefferson, but really the primary motivation is this idea of personal gain and so the Bundrens and the buzzards actually do have a lot in common.
I think this was intentional on Faulkner's part because the similarities are just so obvious. Faulkner's characters in this novel are just dirtbags who are in the journey for themselves and are just trying to scavenge off whatever they can from Addie's death; they themselves are buzzards. The Bundrens are the human equivalent of buzzards.- KRi-c Feb 27, 2008
So my question is, why? Why do these buzzards keep appearing when we already know that Addie is dead and has been dead for several days? Everyone knows that dead people start to smell after a couple of days, which would naturally attract buzzards. So what? This answer seems so obivous that I can't help but wonder if there is a deeper meaning. Any thoughts? -
I agree that the buzzards have some deeper meaning. As lma said, the buzzards were an obvious sign of Addie's approaching death at the beginning of the novel, but after that it only seems logical that there would be buzzards following them as they traveled with the body. The buzzards become out of the ordinary because of their importance and the number of times they are mentioned. Vardaman who seems to be keeping track of how many there are notices them most. Vardaman also wonders where the buzzards go at night when they stop to sleep. He describes them as being "in little tall black circles" both on page 194 and 210.
They seem to be an important symbol for Vardaman. He is most intrigued by them. Maybe they represent a kind of spiritual death or a death of the relationships within the family as their journey proceeds. There most be an importance to the increasing number of buzzards that appear. Maybe they are foreshadowing what later happens with Darl because Darl is the one that Vardaman continually asks about the buzzards. Other than this the deeper meaning of the buzzards is still a mystery to me.-
Yes, Vardaman was very intrigued by the buzzards. But I also thought the buzzards were a symbol of the ridiculousness and the ugliness of the Bundren's situation. Vardaman was curious about the birds, but to everyone else, they brought a sense of shame. When the buzzards were mentioned, I even felt embarrassed for the Bundren's. "There must have been dozen of them setting along the ridge-pole of the barn, and that boy was chasing another one around the lot like it was a turkey and it just lifting enough to dodge him and go flopping back to the roof of the shed again where he had found it setting on the coffin" (187). Nobody could catch the buzzards, they were always just out of reach. For Armstid, these buzzards seemed to be the last straw. It was described as an "outrage" both times the Bundren's stayed somewhere. The buzzards were an embarrassment. They were constantly hovering over the wagon so as to say "Oh, here come the Bundren's and their reeking, decaying mother." Vardaman was probably so interested in them because he was too young to understand the message they sent.
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I don't remember exactly where it is, but somewhere in the novel everybody else is doing their thing, but Vardaman is constantly watching the buzzards. It seems to me that it is just showing us how much Vardaman is trying to figure out death. He tries so hard to understand to concept death that it is consuming him. As he watches the buzzards, he is constantly reminded of his dead mother and the dead fish. While the others were bothered by the presence of the buzzards, Vardaman welcomed them because he was curious about them. Kind of like the coffin -- I think towards the end of the journey the others were getting annoyed by the stench and the presence of the coffin, but Vardaman was just trying to understand why his mom is still in there after such a long time. For me, the buzzards are just a symbol of death. -
This topic was brought up in class today and someone mentioned another possibility. The buzzards are following the Bundren family most obviously because of the smell of the rotting flesh of Addie's corpse. I believe it was Brother Tom who said that this is a family that is plagued by death. Is it another symbol that the buzzards are following the Bundrens because they, as a family, are dying? We don't have much evidence as to how much Addie held the Bundren family together, but it very well may be possible that this journey is the death of the family. We definitely see a symbolic death in many of the characters. They lose something of significant value, though it may not be their lives. Jewel loses his horse, Cash his leg, and Darl his mind. Could all these losses together aid the death of the family as a whole? -
Yea I agree with you Kho that the family as a whole in fact is dying I mean take a look at the book's ending. Darl goes insane and is taken away without anyone really caring, Addie's gone, Cash is hurt, and we can go on down the line, but the family is really being reduced to rumbles from their many years of dysfunction. At the end, Anse goes as far as immediately getting a new Mrs. Bundren, and I kind of view this as a rebirth or rekindling of the Bundren family, not to a better normal family, but just a repetition of the old dysfunctional family that existed before. As Faulkner said in his speech, humans will endure.-
I don't think that there's that much here really. There's a parallel between the family and vultures, who prey off the dying, and so the family is also anticipating the death of Addie and after her death, using it, and feeding on it for their own purposes. We even talking in class on this: why do they all want to go to the city? Well, teeth, abortion, deliveries, etc. They're using their poor mother as an excuse, and don't even seem to mourn her properly. So that's how they're like them, but I'm not sure there's much else to it, just a parallel Faulkner stuck in, but nothing particularly meaningful, beyond the fact that none of them have completely sincere feelings and that their all just waiting for her to die and see what they can do once she's gone. Plus, vultures have a negative connotation, which sort of carries over to the family... -
I feel like the Bundren family and these Buzzards that keep following them around actually have a lot in common. See, both groups want to take advantage of Addie's death with the buzzards using it as a chance to possibly get a some meat while the Bundrens want to use Addie's death for their own various reasons none of which really involve actually paying respects to Addie, but rather treating her as a piece of meat for them to tear at. You have Anse who used the death as a chance to get the new teeth and a new wife upon Addie's burial in Jefferson, and of course you have Dewey Dell who wanted to get to Jefferson so that she could terminate her pregnancy. The point is that these people just like buzzards want to rip and tear at Addie after her death instead of doing the proper thing and properly paying their respects. Yes, on the surface it appears as though they are fulfilling her last wish by taking her body to Jefferson, but really the primary motivation is this idea of personal gain and so the Bundrens and the buzzards actually do have a lot in common.
I think this was intentional on Faulkner's part because the similarities are just so obvious. Faulkner's characters in this novel are just dirtbags who are in the journey for themselves and are just trying to scavenge off whatever they can from Addie's death; they themselves are buzzards. The Bundrens are the human equivalent of buzzards.-